Diplomacy, the established method of influencing the decisions and behaviour of foreign governments and peoples through dialogue, negotiation, and other measures short of war or violence

Diplomacy, the established method of influencing the decisions and behaviour of foreign governments and peoples through dialogue, negotiation, and other measures short of war or violence. Modern diplomatic practices are a product of the post-Renaissance European state system. Historically, diplomacy meant the conduct of official (usually bilateral) relations between sovereign states. By the 20th century, however, the diplomatic practices pioneered in Europe had been adopted throughout the world, and diplomacy had expanded to cover summit meetings and other international conferences, parliamentary diplomacy, the international activities of supranational and subnational entities, unofficial diplomacy by nongovernmental elements, and the work of international civil servants. The term diplomacy is derived via French from the ancient Greek diplōma, composed of diplo, meaning “folded in two,” and the suffix -ma, meaning “an object.” The folded document conferred a privilege—often a permit to travel—on the bearer, and the term came to denote documents through which princes granted such favours. Later it applied to all solemn documents issued by chancelleries, especially those containing agreements between sovereigns. Diplomacy later became identified with international relations, and the direct tie to documents lapsed (except in diplomatics, which is the science of authenticating old official documents). In the 18th century the French term diplomate (“diplomat” or “diplomatist”) came to refer to a person authorized to negotiate on behalf of a state.
This article discusses the nature of diplomacy, its history, and the ways in which modern diplomacy is conducted, including the selection and training of diplomats and the organization of diplomatic bodies. For a discussion of the legal rules governing diplomatic negotiation and the preparation of treaties and other agreements, see international law. One venue for diplomacy, the United Nations (UN), is considered in detail under that title.
Diplomacy is often confused with foreign policy, but the terms are not synonymous. Diplomacy is the chief, but not the only, instrument of foreign policy, which is set by political leaders, though diplomats (in addition to military and intelligence officers) may advise them. Foreign policy establishes goals, prescribes strategies, and sets the broad tactics to be used in their accomplishment. It may employ secret agents, subversion, war, or other forms of violence as well as diplomacy to achieve its objectives. Diplomacy is the principal substitute for the use of force or underhanded means in statecraft; it is how comprehensive national power is applied to the peaceful adjustment of differences between states. It may be coercive (i.e., backed by the threat to apply punitive measures or to use force) but is overtly nonviolent. Its primary tools are international dialogue and negotiation, primarily conducted by accredited envoys (a term derived from the French envoyé, meaning “one who is sent”) and other political leaders. Unlike foreign policy, which generally is enunciated publicly, most diplomacy is conducted in confidence, though both the fact that it is in progress and its results are almost always made public in contemporary international relations. The purpose of foreign policy is to further a state’s interests, which are derived from geography, history, economics, and the distribution of international power. Safeguarding national independence, security, and integrity—territorial, political, economic, and moral—is viewed as a country’s primary obligation, followed by preserving a wide freedom of action for the state. The political leaders, traditionally of sovereign states, who devise foreign policy pursue what they perceive to be the national interest, adjusting national policies to changes in external conditions and technology. Primary responsibility for supervising the execution of policy may lie with the head of state or government, a cabinet or a nominally nongovernmental collective leadership, the staff of the country’s leader, or a minister who presides over the foreign ministry, directs policy execution, supervises the ministry’s officials, and instructs the country’s diplomats abroad. The purpose of diplomacy is to strengthen the state, nation, or organization it serves in relation to others by advancing the interests in its charge. To this end, diplomatic activity endeavours to maximize a group’s advantages without the risk and expense of using force and preferably without causing resentment. It habitually, but not invariably, strives to preserve peace; diplomacy is strongly inclined toward negotiation to achieve agreements and resolve issues between states. Even in times of peace, diplomacy may involve coercive threats of economic or other punitive measures or demonstrations of the capability to impose unilateral solutions to disputes by the application of military power. However, diplomacy normally seeks to develop goodwill toward the state it represents, nurturing relations with foreign states and peoples that will ensure their cooperation or—failing that—their neutrality.

The Tang dynasty (618–907) is considered a golden age in Chinese history. It succeeded the short-lived Sui dynasty (581–618), which reunified China after almost four hundred years of fragmentation. The Tang benefited from the foundations the Sui had laid, and they built a more enduring state on the political and governmental institutions the Sui emperors established. Known for its strong military power, successful diplomatic relationships, economic prosperity, and cosmopolitan culture, Tang China was, without doubt, one of the greatest empires in the medieval world.

During the Tang dynasty, China stretched its territory (including the protectorate states) from the Korean peninsula in the east, to the steppes of Mongolia in the north, to present-day Afghanistan in the west, and to northern Vietnam in the south. Tang secured peace and safety on overland trade routes—the Silk Road—that reached as far as Rome. Merchants, diplomats, and pilgrims came from all over East and Central Asia. They brought with them new religions, ideas, and cultural practices that were eagerly embraced by Tang elite circles. The two capital cities of Chang’an and Luoyang were flooded with foreigners from different parts of the world.¹
This confident cosmopolitanism is reflected in all the arts of Tang China. The constant exchange of goods along the Silk Road, such as textiles, metalwork, and glassware, inspired Tang craftsmen to experiment with novel techniques, shapes, and designs. One of the most typical and well-known Tang ceramics are the “three-colored” glaze (sancai) wares. Energetically modeled and brightly colored, Tang sancai wares are thought to have been reserved for burial use. Sancai tomb figurines gave a vivid picture of daily life in Tang times Bactrian camels, horses with riders, as well as foreign servants, merchants, and musicians were all popular subjects. Tang potters also experimented with and developed the skills in making single color wares, including white ware and green-glazed celadons, which laid the groundwork for the Song dynasty’s taste in ceramics. Tang painting prospered, partly thanks to the patronage of the Tang court. Painters from all over the empire were attracted to the court. Figure painting thrived during this period. Famous court painters established themselves with their masterful drawing skills. For example, Yan Liben (c. 601–673) was known for his rich and glowing colors and delicate details; while Wu Daozi (c. 680–759) was famous for his vigorous brushwork Landscape painting took two directions during the Tang. One was a style of painting known as blue-green landscape developed by the court painters, executed in fine lines with added mineral colors. It may have been inspired by Central Asian painting styles. The other was the monochrome ink painting developed by the poet-painter Wang Wei (701–761). This style was favored by the newly emerging social elite who became government officials through the official examination system. The division between the two styles became more apparent during the Song dynasty (960–1279). Besides their excellent painting skills, many of the cultivated scholar-officials were also great poets and calligraphers. The three arts—painting, poetry, and calligraphy—have since been connected and appreciated as “the three perfections.” Scholars often refer to the Tang (618–906) and Song (960–1279) dynasties as the "medieval" period of China. The civilizations of the Tang (618–906) and Song (960–1279) dynasties of China were among the most advanced civilizations in the world at the time. Discoveries in the realms of science, art, philosophy, and technology—combined with a curiosity about the world around them—provided the men and women of this period with a worldview and level of sophistication that in many ways were unrivaled until much later times, even in China itself. When the rulers of the Tang dynasty (618–906) unified China in the early seventh century, the energies and wealth of the nation proved strong enough not only to ensure internal peace for the first time in centuries, but also to expand the Chinese realm to include large portions of neighboring lands such as Korea, Vietnam, northeast, central, and southeast Asia. The Tang became a great empire, the most powerful and influential of its time any place in the world. Flourishing trade and communication transformed China into the cultural center of an international age. Tang cities such as the capital of Chang’an (modern Xi’an), the eastern terminus of the great Silk Road, were global hubs of banking and trade as well as of religious, scholarly, and artistic life. Their inhabitants, from all parts of China and as far away as India and Persia, were urbane and sophisticated. Tang society was liberal and largely tolerant of foreign views and ideas; in fact the royal family of Tang, surnamed Li, was of non-Han Chinese origin (perhaps originally from a Turkish-speaking area of Central Asia), and leaders of government were drawn from many parts of the region. Government was powerful, but not oppressive; education was encouraged, with the accomplished and learned well rewarded. Great wealth was accumulated by a few, but the Tang rulers saw that lands were redistributed, and all had some measure of opportunity for material advancement. This was also a time when many women attained higher status at court, and a greater degree of freedom in society. This dynamic, affluent, liberal, and culturally diverse environment produced a great efflorescence of culture unparalleled in Chinese history. Buddhism, originally imported from India, thrived to such an extent that China itself became a major center of Buddhist learning, attracting students and pilgrims from other countries. In East Asia, Chinese, rather than Sanskrit, became the language of Chinese Buddhist texts that served to transmit Chinese culture, ideas, and philosophy abroad. Significantly, Buddhist influence also resulted in the compilation of huge encyclopedias of knowledge during the Tang, preserving much earlier Chinese cultural material for posterity, and inspiring advances in mathematics and the applied sciences such as engineering and medicine. The Tang was also an age of great figure painters, whose religious frescoes filled caves along the Silk Road through central Asia, and covered the walls of royal tombs. New styles of ceramics, bold and colorful with variegated glazes, embraced Indian, Persian, and Greek forms.²
Above all poetry flourished during the Tang, and indeed the Chinese think of Tang poetry as the greatest of all literary achievements. Tang poets like Du Fu, Li Bo, Wang Wei, and Bo Juyi created works of art that powerfully explored the relationships between sounds, images, and philosophy. Tang poets aimed to capture the fleeting and profound, influencing Chinese writers until the present day. Together with the surviving examples of painting and sculpture, Tang poetry manifests a Chinese inner vision and view of the world and cosmos in a way that more abstract scholarly works did not; these creative works express what might otherwise remain theoretical or ethereal into palpable, understandable, and immediate terms.
The most magnificent urban center in the world at the time, the capital of Tang China, Chang’an (literally “Everlasting Peace”), was a walled city built in alignment with the stars to symbolize its role as the world in miniature. The city witnessed the most splendid cultural achievements during the eighth century. As home to the most accomplished artists and thinkers of the day, it played much the same role as Florence did in fifteenth-century Europe. Just as it was witness to the height of Tang culture in the eighth century, it also was destined to be the focal point of the dynasty’s decline: when a rogue general decided to rebel in 756, not only was the emperor sent tem- porarily into exile, but the artists, poets, and priests of the city also fled. Although the political structure of the Tang remained in place for another 150 years (until 907), the city and state, with resources scattered, were weakened. Pretenders to the throne began to emerge, warlords began to consolidate authority, and nomadic peoples on the northern and western borders of the country also competed for political power. But it was a gentle decline: overall the three hundred years of the Tang were marked by impressive advances in all aspects of art, science, and philosophy.
By the early tenth century, the Tang ruling house fell, and a period of chaos ensued. China was divided into at least fifteen different independent political regimes, and peoples on the border areas set up their own states. The cultural glory of Tang was eclipsed, surviving only among tiny warring states. However in the year 960, another unified empire arose, the Song. Boldly syncretic, the arts of China’s Tang dynasty (618–907) exhibit myriad international influences that were absorbed through diplomacy, conquest, trade, and pilgrimage. At the center of it all was Chang’an (present-day Xi’an), the most populous city in the world at the time, the seat of power for the Tang imperial court, and a pulsing hub of art, fashion, and culture.

A popular theme for Tang court painters was that of foreign ambassadors submitting tribute to the emperor. Diplomatic missions and the concomitant opulent offerings were an important medium of international exchange. In the dynasty’s first decades, the Tang expanded control north and east to Goguryeo and Baekje (in Manchuria and the Korean peninsula), north to the steppes of Mongolia, west to the deserts and oases of Central Asia (in what is now Xinjiang), and south to parts of the present-day provinces of Guangxi, Yunnan, and northern Vietnam.

These and other kingdoms sent staples and exotica: lions from Persia and rhinoceroses from Champa (a kingdom in south and central Vietnam), hawks from the Korean peninsula, ostriches sent by western Turks, sandalwood from the Indonesian archipelago, cardamom from the coast of the Malay peninsula, indigo from Samarqand, and wool from Tibet. Even entertainers—musicians, dancers, and performers—were presented as gifts. Of the many varieties of tribute, horses from the west were perhaps the most valuable. They were considered vital assets in the Tang emperor’s ability to both wage triumphant conquests abroad and maintain tranquility at home.
Successful military campaigns ensured far-reaching and stable trade routes, such as the network now known as the Silk Road, which provided a thoroughfare for goods and ideas between China, Central Asia, India, and Persia. A web of maritime routes connected Chinese seaports like Guangzhou in the south to India, the Persian Gulf, and from there to the east coast of Africa. The direct exchange of goods, such as textiles, metalware, and ceramics, inspired Tang craftsmen to experiment with novel techniques, shapes, and designs. As is evident in tomb paintings and figurines, international trade whetted a taste for striking and sumptuous fashions among the Tang elite. Leopard-skin hats and close-fitting sleeves, imitating the clothing of Central Asians and Persians to the west, were popular in the mid-eighth century. High boots, practical for riding, were worn by both men and women, as were short tunics. Polo and archery contests, musical instruments and styles, and the scandalous Sogdian whirling dance were imported from kingdoms of Central Asia and fervently embraced in Chinese avant-garde circles.
Trade routes were also traversed by Buddhist pilgrims. The most famous was the Chinese monk Xuanzang (ca. 602–664), who, in defiance of the emperor Taizong’s prohibition against travel beyond China, departed Chang’an in 629 and walked to India. He returned triumphantly more than sixteen years later, accompanied by a caravan laden with sutras, statues, and relics, which he bestowed to the emperor. He chronicled his journey, describing the climates, peoples, and customs he encountered, in his book Records of the Western Regions.
Tang culture also emanated outward. Tribute was met with equal or, in some cases, more valuable donations of silk. As the dynasty wore on, the Turks supplying horses were able to demand exorbitant “prices” for their offerings. Attempts to solidify uneasy diplomatic alliances were made with marriage to a Tang princess, who would arrive with her own extensive retinue, dowry, and customs. Tang China was also the destination for pilgrims like Ennin, who came from Japan in 838. The transmission of Chinese manifestations of Buddh ism to Korea and Japan, such as the Chan sect and temple architecture modeled on Chinese palaces and incorporating pagodas, intensified during the Tang. Aspects of the Chinese writing system, as well as political structure and Confucian values, were adopted in Japan as well as kingdoms in Korea and Vietnam.
Eventually, the fruits of the Tang’s effervescent outlook and international ambitions created fissures in the central government’s foundation. Hostilities with Tibet began to divert resources, while quelling rebellions at home necessitated pulling back garrisons from the northwest. A pragmatic alliance with the Uighurs to the west would prove to have expensive and even bloody consequences. To the Tang, the charms of alien cultures began to wane and more native tastes were renewed. From 842 to 846, the Tang government rejected its previously tolerant stance toward foreign religions and waged a brutal campaign against Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism. Perceiving the imperial government’s increasing feebleness, kingdoms to the south and west raided China’s borders, while bandits and rebellions instigated further unrest within, until the Tang ultimately disintegrated almost 300 years after its founding. QualityThe Diplomacy between Tang Dynasty and Japan
The Tang Dynasty(619-907AD) ended the chaos that existed after the reign by e dynasty and united China. It was founded by Li’s family in the capital of Chang an. The Tang dynasty was one of the greatest dynasties in Chinese history (ushistory). Diplomacy was one of the most successful parts during the Tang Dynasty. Culture, language, education and religion were exchanged rapidly between China and Japan (taschool).
In the Tang dynasty, religion was one of the most important things between China and Japan’s diplomacy. The religion of early China was Buddhism and Japan was Taoism. Since the Tang dynasty, Buddhism has been propagated and developed in Japan. During this period, a lot of Chinese Buddhist …show more content…³
Abe no Nakamaro(698-770AD) was one of the most famous envoys from japan to Tang dynasty, he also called Chao Heng by Chinese. When he was nineteen, he was sent to the capital of China, Chang an, studied in best school and was an officer in the government. During his Chinese life, he learns a lot about Chinese culture, such as poems, calligraphy and etiquette. He also made some friends, which were the most famous poet in the tang dynasty. They had a really good relationship, before he back to Japan, the poets created so many poems to commemorate him.He also brought a large of literary things back to Japan let Chinese culture integrate into Japanese, and then the Chinese poem and calligraphy started popular in …show more content…⁴
After envoy monk Kūkai back to Japan, he created one of the first language in japan which was called hiragana.
The architecture of China was brought to Japan by the monks and envoys to. Until now we still can see some old temple in japan are looking similar to some Chinese temple. Monk Jian Zhen, Kūkai and so many envoys or monks, when they visited japan or back to japan, they bring a lot construction technology to japan and built a lot building. Based on this building style, Japanese had evolved their own building style.
Over years and years, our society is still developing, we learn history because we can take history as a mirror to see how the people did a good thing or made a mistake. Tang dynasty is one of the most prosperous dynasty during Chinese history, the diplomacy with Japan was just a part of it, history are amazing we still have a long story to look at. In this history can 't with out every single person, every of them had